Woman Experiencing Severe Headaches Sees Doctor - Finds Spider In Ear

By: Christopher Feery | December 6, 2018

A woman from India awoke from her slumber with a nagging headache, and she had a sneaking suspicion it was due to something that was lodged in her ear. Lekshmi L from Hebbal, India felt some discomfort in her right ear and a weird tingling sensation, and she tried to dislodge whatever was stuck in there. Her efforts proved unsuccessful, and the headache persisted.

As the Daily Mail shares, that would lead her to head to the Columbia Asia Hospital in Hebbal. The woman’s pain had become downright debilitating, and her husband rushed her over there so they could get to the bottom of it.

Doctors would quickly figure out what the trouble was, and it’s something that’s going to give you a serious case of the willies.

Turns out she had a live spider crawling around in her ear canal. Doctors would discover the creepy crawly thing during the examination. It seems that the woman had fallen asleep on her veranda, and the spider must’ve crawled in there while she was sleeping.

Doctors would exercise some patience and simply shine a light on the spider, who would eventually take the hint and slowly crawl back out. Dr. Santosh Shivaswamy, Consultant ENT at Columbia Hospital, treated the woman, and he notes that it’s one of the more unusual cases he has come across.

“'It is common to see emergency room visits due to the presence a foreign object in the ear and it takes a simple procedure to remove the object,” Shivaswamy said. “However, when a living insect makes its way inside a human ear, the patient's anxiety makes it difficult to continue the procedure. It was rare to see a live spider moving inside someone's ear canal.”

As for the freaked out woman, she’s incredibly relieved that her trauma is over with, but it sounds like she’ll have a serious case of the creeps for a while.

“I was terrified as I could feel movement of a creature in my ear. The acute earache followed by sharp pains suffocated me,” Lekshmi said. “I couldn't think of anything and was petrified when the doctor confirmed presence of a spider in my ear.”

We’ll assume her days of napping on the veranda will be a thing of the past - at least for a little while - as this is an incredibly shocking incident that can really change your approach to things. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine she has some trouble sleeping in general, as this incident is like a scene out of a horror movie.

As for the hospital staff, kudos for remaining calm and handling this scary incident so swiftly. This is one of those incredibly rare cases that you don’t necessarily get prepared for in medical school, and cooler heads often prevail in those situations.

Sounds like the doctors and staff used that principle successfully, and you should definitely keep them in mind if you wake up with the terrifying feeling of an insect crawling around inside of your ear.